The name "Portage" comes from an old Native American path called "Portage Path", which ran between the
Cuyahoga and
Tuscarawas rivers, where travelers
portaged their canoes. The location of the trail today is within the boundaries of neighboring
Summit County. As of 1600, the area was likely almost entirely home to the
Whittlesey culture, a presumably Algonquian people who lived along the southern shore of Lake Erie, to the west of the Erie Nation. They were a mixed culture people that exhibited signs of picking up traits from both Fort Ancients and Iroquoians. The Erie may have also held a bit of the area, but this is unclear. During the
Beaver Wars, approximately 1632–1701, the Whittlesey and Erie were already at war when the Erie decided to also declare war on the Iroquois for the atrocities being committed against allied tribes in Canada. The Erie lost around 1650 and the Whittlesey were likely similarly subjugated afterwards, as the Iroquois conquered all the way to the shores of Lake Michigan by the 1670s. The Iroquois placed a vassal tribe of captured Huron in the area who became known as the Wyandot, while they conquered further west. Later, the French made it to the Mississippi River and volunteered to aid the Natives in that region to push the Iroquois back to New York. By the end of the Beaver Wars, the Wyandot had broken free of Iroquois control and reabsorbed surviving Hurons taking refuge all over the Great Lakes, but set aside the area roughly between the Cuyahoga River, the
Mahoning River and the Ohio-Pennsylvania border as a collective hunting ground, to be enjoyed by all the tribes of the region. The Lenape had a village around modern day Youngstown, possibly established during the 1690s, from which they and the Seneca and Shawnee from further south staged ventures into the region. Up in Ashtabula County, the Ottawas, or Mississaugas, from the western end of Lake Erie were allowed to maintain a village at Conneaut. Ashtabula itself seems to come from the Algonquian name for the area and roughly translates to "Place with Enough for everyone." The Lenape later lost rights to the eastern extremes of their territory between the Potomac River and the Mahoning River by a government proclamation in 1763, but sources say they began relocating into Tuscarawas and Holmes counties in 1758 in preparation for such an event. The region continued being used as such until around 1785, when the newly formed United States tried issuing a treaty stripping the vast majority of what is now Ohio from Native control and began offering subsidies for people to move into the region, sparking the
Northwest Indian War from 1785–1795. In the aftermath, the government issued the
Treaty of Greenville, which stripped even more land from the Natives than originally planned and opened up northeast Ohio for white settlement for the first time. Most Natives did not leave and mixed tribal communities still existed all over the state for some time afterwards, with permanent Ottawa, Seneca, and Wyandot villages still existing in what is now Portage and Geauga counties. All written accounts of Natives seems to have ceased sometime around the War of 1812, which coincided with the Shawnee War (1811–1813). The local government had its own land arrangements with the Natives for a time. It is unclear where the Natives went after that, but this may coincide with the
1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes, some of the largest earthquakes to ever hit the east coast in recorded history. It was interpreted by many Ohio Natives that they should throw their support behind Shawnee cult leader, Tenskwatawa, at the Prophettown stronghold, coinciding with the outbreak of the Shawnee War later that year. Most of the Eastern nations got sucked up into his cult and many Natives relocated to live near him. Portage County is also home to a burial mound—Towner's Mound, in Franklin Township—which predates all the above mentioned cultures. It was unique in structure to other types of burial mounds from the Adena, Hopewell, and Fort Ancient cultures, but identical to two other excavated mounds in
North Benton, Ohio, and
Warren, Pennsylvania. After the discovery of the
New World, the land that became Portage County was originally part of the French colony of
Canada (New France), which was ceded in 1763 to
Great Britain and renamed the
Province of Quebec. In the late 18th century, the land became part of the
Connecticut Western Reserve in the
Northwest Territory, which was purchased by the
Connecticut Land Company in 1795. The first European settler in what is now Portage County was Abraham Honey in 1798 in the area now known as
Mantua Township, followed by Asa Hall in what is now
Atwater Township in April 1799. In June 1799,
Benjamin Tappan, Jr. arrived and founded
Ravenna, David Daniels came to what is now
Palmyra Township, and Ebenezer Sheldon settled in what is now
Aurora. A family group of
Huguenot refugees also eventually migrated to Portage County by 1804. When first settled, the area that presently constitutes Portage County was part of the original
Jefferson County, which had been organized in 1797. In 1800, the area was made part of
Trumbull County, which followed the boundaries of the
Connecticut Western Reserve. In 1802, all of what is now Portage County was organized under the name of
Franklin Township with other townships being formed later. On February 10, 1807, the Ohio state legislature passed the act to create Portage County from Trumbull County, taking effect on June 7, 1807. Portage County remained attached to Trumbull County until June 8, 1808, when the first elections were held. Initially, the county included a large area of the Western Reserve that encompassed most of present-day Summit County, all of Medina and Huron counties, and parts of Lorain and Ashland counties. There were six organized townships in 1808: Franklin, Deerfield, Aurora, Hiram, Springfield, and Hudson, with new townships organized later, reaching a maximum of 30. The present-day boundaries of Portage County were established in 1840 following the 1812 creation of Medina County, a slight boundary adjustment in 1827 with Cuyahoga County, and finally the creation of Summit County in 1840, which took 10 townships from Portage County, along with 3 townships from Medina County and two from Stark County. The government sent in a massive team to investigate, whom the locals called the G-Men. Today, the James A. Garfield schools in Garrettsville have the G-Men as their team mascot. Portage County was also the site of the
Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970. ==Geography==